


Talking With Monsters

by RedHairGreenStockings



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Childhood, Dysfunctional Family, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:44:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5845516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHairGreenStockings/pseuds/RedHairGreenStockings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during Season 3. Tommy thinks there are monsters in the closet, so Richard intervenes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talking With Monsters

Whenever Gillian approaches him he always assumes he’s in trouble.

“Tommy wants you,” she whispers. None of the girls or the clients must hear. Her voice is just shy of a hiss. Richard knows she envies him, grasping even for a child’s heart. He thinks that if she wants him to love her she’s going to have to do a little more than tucking him in and the occasional picture show.

But he won’t judge; they’re working this out together, trying to both be there for him while bumping into each other like furniture in the dark.

He comes out from behind the bar and follows her upstairs. Tommy’s room is closer to his, far away from any of the “girls’ quarters. Gillian has left the doors open, presumably leaving in haste to fetch him.

Bedtime is her responsibility. This was the only agreement Richard had asked her to come to verbally with him, knowing from the beginning it would be the time of day when he would have to look most directly at all the ways he fails to do this job. He can’t sing lullabies or read stories anymore, though he aches to revive all the old songs his mother passed to him and Emma—summer is a’comin’ in; loudly sing, cuckoo…He wonders if, even without the torn apart throat, the songs he once sang in the choir might still ring so false in his ears.

Tommy is sitting up in bed, blanket wrapped around him from head to foot so only the little white face peeks out.

“See,” Gillian says in her honeyed voice as they enter. “Here’s Richard.”

He sits on the edge of the bed and instantly the boy scrambles out from under the covers and into his lap.

“What’s. The matter, pal?”

Tommy sits up, craning to get close to his ear.

“I think there’s monsters,” he whispers, tears scratching his throat. “I looked under the bed but I dunno about the closet. Can you look for ‘em?”

The irony of it almost makes Richard laugh. He sometimes still wakes up with little Emily shrieking in his head.

“I told him I would,” Gillian says from the other side of the room. “But he said it had to be a soldier.”

“Your Ma—mm—is more than a match. For any monster.”

“But you got your guns, though!” he insists. “If there is a monster you can kill it with your guns.”

“No killing,” Richard says firmly, taking the boy’s chin between his fingers.

“Daddy used to catch them on the floor in a sack and put ‘em outside.”

Richard smiles, shuddering out a chuckle as he imagines his friend wiggling about on the floor shouting and farcing the capture, shaking the bag in his fist to make it look as if something was moving as he tossed it onto the sand outside the back door.

“Your dad was. Mm, much stronger than me. So here’s. What we’ll do. Hmm. I happen to be very good. At speaking monster. Hmm. So I’ll. Tch. Try talking to it. And see what it wants.”

Tommy looks doubtful. Richard thinks back to what his father told him in those few moments as a child when he dared confess fear of anything.

“It’s important. To try and talk about. What scares you. And to talk to it, if you can. Mm.”

“Why? I don’t think I wanna.”

“’S hard sometimes,” Richard nods. “But it helps. To understand. And it makes the scary things—tch—less scary. When we understand them.”

Tommy nods slowly, still looking rather unsure. Richard gently pulls the covers down as he continues to speak, putting his charge back to bed.

“Hmm, most monsters. Are just lonely. They get lost in dark places. And want to go home. Hngh. But we don’t speak their language so it’s. Hard on them.”

“Where do they go home to?”

“Mm—not sure. I suppose there’s a monster city somewhere. Maybe in a forest. Or underground. I think—mm—most of them don’t want to. Say where it is. In case people should go in and. Start killing for no reason.”

“How did you learn if nobody else knows?”

“I met a couple. In the war. They like the mud and. Hngh, war can get dirty.”

Tommy giggles, pulling the blankets up to his chin. Richard casts a sideways glance at the closet door.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m gonna go for it.”

He makes a show of easy confidence as he goes and crouches by the closet door, pressing an ear and a palm to it. He growls, trying to create a different type of sound than his crazy, uncontrollable throat normally makes on its own. After waiting briefly, he nods, and turns back.

“It says it—mm—doesn’t want to come out if it’s. All the same to us.”

“Okay by me,” Tommy replies nervously, burrowing under the covers. “But it can’t stay in there because I need to get my coats out of there.”

Richard relays this information.

“The monster says it. Isn’t here to cause any trouble—hmm. It only wants. A place to sleep. Tch. Since it’s cold tonight. It wants me to make sure. You know. Hmm—that little boys have too. Many bones and that. Eating them’s a common. Misconception. It’s going to leave, mm, before you wake up.”

Tommy nods suspiciously.

“Are you sure that’s what it said?”

Richard puts up his right hand.

“Maybe,” Gillian interjects, coming to sit on the bed from her place by the door. “We should leave something that monsters like to eat instead. I’ll bet it’s got a long journey back home.”

She bestows on Richard the ghost of a smile.

“Yeah, Richard! Ask it what it likes.”

Richard complies, grunting into the varnished wood and pausing for a response.

“We have some a’ that yucky pea soup left over.” Tommy wrinkles his nose.

“Not soup,” Richard disagrees vehemently. “Monsters. Have claws. They can’t hold spoons. Hngh.” He waits. “It says. Fruit and vegetables. Are what monsters like best.”

“We have oranges left over from Christmas,” Gillian smiles. “I’ll get one. Tommy, let Richard help you back into bed so we can all get some sleep.”

“Okay.” He looks at Richard. “Will you stay? In case the monster has anything to talk about?”

“All right. Hmm. But just until you fall. Asleep.”

Richard sits down with his back to the closet door, legs stretched out in front of him. Tommy thanks him for helping.

“That’s—tch—what I’m here for, pal. Next time—mm—you’re scared of something. I want you to talk to your mother. Mm, or me. About it first.”

Tommy gives him the thumbs up.

“Deal.”

He’s asleep by the time Gillian comes in with the orange. So Richard puts the empty dish in front of the closet door and puts the fruit in his pocket. As they leave, Gillian closing the door gently behind her, she turns to him and murmurs:

“You really are very good with him, you know.”

She’s throwing the guard dog a bone. He knows that full well and doesn’t need it. Nevertheless, he smiles back.

“You too.”

 

***

 

The monster city becomes a regular fixture in Tommy’s drawings over the next few weeks. Gillian gets out a sewing kit she hasn’t used since she was twelve and sews him a little green stuffed toy with purple spikes on his back, delighting her grandson. He starts to learn “the language” for himself.

One night she finds him curled on the floor clinging to it.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing? It’s past your bedtime.”

Tommy looks up with wide eyes.

“Richard’s busy talking to the monsters; I thought I could help, but the door’s locked.”

Gillian hears the muffled shouts, screams, and sobbing from inside the room. Gillian picks him up.

“Come on, baby. Let’s leave Richard to it this time.”

She tells Richard about it the next day because even in their truce she can’t find the kindness in her not to. He apologizes, but only once.

 

***

 

He doesn’t sleep much—Tommy all day and then bartending or bouncing for the girls all night. Between that and his general state of anxious wakefulness, there are only a few hours with the sky just barely lightening in the morning, or the two hour gap in the afternoon when he puts Tommy down for a nap.

Of course one day his body has to give out. One day he sits down, leans against the wall at the edge of the bed and finds himself weighted like a stone.

Just twenty minutes, he tells himself.

This is why he hates sleep. He lacks control. His breathing is too shallow so his body does what needs to be done without his mind consenting to it.

He wakes with a jump. Tommy is sitting on his knees holding his mask in his hands. Richard abstractly thinks of the dog. His hand instinctively goes to his face. He waits for the scream, for the tears. He starts cataloguing where all his things are in his head, the better to pack quickly and leave.

“Tommy…” he begins.

“You got that fighting bad guys, right?”

Tommy’s voice shakes a little but that’s all. Richard nods.

“That’s right.”

“With my daddy?”

“Mm, yeah.”

Tommy leans forward curiously.

“Your eye’s not there; does it hurt?”

“Not really, no. Sometimes—mm—it feels funny. Like when your—tch—foot falls asleep.”

Tommy doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, only stares into every crevice of the deadened skin. Richard does his best to endure, thinking of Angela, even though his skin is starting to crawl.

“Do you, mm, want me. To put the mask back on, Tommy?”

The boy doesn’t reply, looking down at the eye he’s holding.

“It’s okay.” Richard isn’t sure what a smile looks like on his wounded half, but tries it anyway. “It, hmm, upsets you to see it. Doesn’t it?”

Tommy nods slowly.

“Yeah, mm, I know. That’s what the mask is for. So why don’t you. Just hand it back. Okay?”

He holds it out and Richard replaces it against his skin, trying to ignore the pain at the base of his throat.

“Hey, Richard?” Tommy pipes up.

“Uh huh?”

“It’s still you, right?”

Taking care of a child has taught Richard about communicating even when he doesn’t understand. He puts an arm around his shoulders.

“Yeah, pal, still me.”

“Is your face gonna get better? Like when you put band aids on my knees?”

“No. Sometimes, mm, when grownups. Get hurt it doesn’t. Get better.”

“Why?”

He thinks.

“I think it’s. Because most of us don’t. Drink enough milk.”

Tommy nods solemnly.

“Oh. Okay.”

The child then crawls forward, lays his head down on Richard’s stomach, pops his thumb into his mouth, and continues his nap. Richard leans his head back and takes ten breaths to calm his hammering heart.


End file.
